In less than two and a half years on the market, Apple's iPhone has managed nearly a fifth of the total global smartphone market, thanks to nearly 50 percent year-over-year growth in sales in the third quarter of 2009.

New data released by research firm Gartner Thursday showed that the iPhone has taken a 17.1 percent share of the worldwide smartphone market in the three-month period ending in September. The report said Apple's share is only expected to grow, with even stronger anticipated sales in the fourth quarter, thanks to expansion into China and the addition of new carriers in multiple countries.

The study found Apple to be the third-largest smartphone company, behind only Nokia and Research in Motion. Apple shipped an estimated 7.04 million iPhones in the September quarter, up from just 4.72 million phones and a 12.9 percent share in the same frame a year ago. That represented a 49.2 percent year-over-year increase in sales.

Market leader Nokia took a 39.3 percent slice of the market, shipping 16.16 million smartphones. That was up from 15.47 million in the third quarter of 2008, but represented a smaller percentage of the overall market. Last year, Nokia took 42.3 percent of sales. Gartner said the company's 2009 share represents its lowest ever.

RIM shipped an estimated 8.52 million handsets during the quarter, earning it 20.8 percent of sales. It, too, grew its share, up from 15.9 percent in the same period in 2008, when it shipped 5.8 million smartphones, an increase of 46.9 percent.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users in 3Q09 (Thousands of Units). Source: Gartner.

Coming in fourth with 6.5 percent of sales was HTC, which saw its year-over-year sales grow 60.6 percent. It was followed by Samsung with 3.2 percent. All other hardware makers accounted for the remaining 13.1 percent. In all, 41.06 million smartphones shipped in the third quarter of 2009.

Gartner also tracked the mobile operating system market, where Android reportedly picked up momentum. However, its total global share sits at 3.5 percent.

"The third quarter of 2009 saw the announcement of many new mobile devices, including several Android smartphones ready for the holiday season in the fourth quarter, but hardware commoditization and the growth in open platforms will make it harder for them to stand out," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. "Meanwhile, the channel slowed its inventory-reduction efforts so while some sales volumes increased, average selling prices (ASPs) stagnated. We expect pressure on ASP to continue into 2010."

The report said that the average selling price of the iPhone, however, is expected to hold firm. Last quarter, Apple stated that the ASP of the iPhone was "just over $600," showing that sales tend to skew toward the higher-priced iPhone 3GS.

"Many devices will reach the market in time for Christmas, and mobile carriers will run incentives for consumers during the holidays," Milanesi said. "We expect sales of mobile devices in the fourth quarter of 2009 to show year-over-year growth. As many vendors and industry watchers call for a decrease in sales into the channel, our sell through data is showing that 2009 performance will be flat rather than down over 2008."

Orange in the UK have reported shipping just over 30,000 iPhones in their first weekend stocking the handset, not bad considering O2 has sold so many iPhones here already, looks like Apple can only grow!

The very reason why NOKIA is so LIVID over Iphone...now you see where the hatred coming from, no wonder they slap multimillion dollar lawsuit on Iphone becaise they are so mad and livid on the success of Iphone, so if you cannot beat Iphone sue them and collect money at the expence of iphone...that seem to be what nokia wans, now that they are gradually labelled as has been and out of sync with the times...

I want to know why their market cap hasn't reflected this growth -- they were at 190/share before the whole "Steve is gonna die" crisis hit, and now they're back there. Thing is, now they're a major player in a whole new market, have grown in just about all other areas of production, and are rumored to have a whole new product line about to ship...

why aren't they up to 250/share yet?

stupid market.

oh, and I'm pretty sick of staring at ripped dudes too -- maybe just a little sponser variety would be nice.

Apple in third place behind Nokia and RIM. No wonder Quadra hasn't responded.

Sooooo, let's put this whole thing in perspective shall we? RIM started their entry into mobility devices in 1984, releasing the Blackberry/BES systems in 1999. That would be, generously, an 8-year lead on the introduction of the iPhone.

Nokia has been in the mobility industry even longer - starting back in 1979 with their first truly cellular telephony devices, developing the GSM standards (and patents) in 1987. So even if we look back ONLY to the advent of GSM - that's a 20 year lead on the iPhone. We could even spot Nokia a decade or two for the real development of their smartphones (9000 Communicator in 1996, E50 Enterprise mobile in 2006 or the N70 in 2005).

The iPhone has gone from zero to 17% of the GLOBAL smartphone market in 2.5 years. Or 30 months. Or 10,950 days.

Orange in the UK have reported shipping just over 30,000 iPhones in their first weekend stocking the handset, not bad considering O2 has sold so many iPhones here already, looks like Apple can only grow!

To put into perspective, that is nearly ⅓ of the Droid launch on a carrier with about ⅓ the number of users as Verizon, yet the device was being sold on a competing carrier for a couple years now. That is excellent for sales.

PS: With Deutsche Telekom having such a strong connection Apple in selling iPhones in multiple countries, what are the chances that T-Mobile USA will get to sell it once the AT&T contract is finished? How hard is it for Apple to add the additional UMTS band IV spectrum to the iPhone for sale in the US without having to produce and store two models of each capacity?

Quote:

Originally Posted by masternav

Sooooo, let's put this whole thing in perspective shall we? RIM started their entry into mobility devices in 1984, releasing the Blackberry/BES systems in 1999. That would be, generously, an 8-year lead on the introduction of the iPhone.

Nokia has been in the mobility industry even longer - starting back in 1979 with their first truly cellular telephony devices, developing the GSM standards (and patents) in 1987. So even if we look back ONLY to the advent of GSM - that's a 20 year lead on the iPhone. We could even spot Nokia a decade or two for the real development of their smartphones (9000 Communicator in 1996, E50 Enterprise mobile in 2006 or the N70 in 2005).

The iPhone has gone from zero to 17% of the GLOBAL smartphone market in 2.5 years. Or 30 months. Or 10,950 days.

Not to mention that Apple isnt doing BOGO offers. WIthout that, Apple would have passed Blackberry sales by now. Dont count RiM out but they will need to seriously restructure their business model if they wish to continue to grow financially in the future. Even if they sell more units they are having increasing trouble making profits from their handsets, BES and related services.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

I want to know why their market cap hasn't reflected this growth -- they were at 190/share before the whole "Steve is gonna die" crisis hit, and now they're back there. Thing is, now they're a major player in a whole new market, have grown in just about all other areas of production, and are rumored to have a whole new product line about to ship...

why aren't they up to 250/share yet?

stupid market.

Most everything else is still down 20-25% from December 2007, when Apple hit its previous highs.

Although Nokia is in a slide, it still has 30%+ share. Let's not even consider Nokia. They don't even have much of a US presence. Nokia sells a lot of cheap devices, and cheap and plentiful tend to MOVE. So that's Nokia.

Let's give the crown to RIM, if only the US crown.

The iPhone is within about 3% of RIM, achieved in only two years, with one device (counting the 3G), and demand is only increasing (with what is guaranteed to be a successful "4G" iPhone in the works), with RIM having absolutely nothing to show in the way of capability, content, UI, that the iPhone has, and with business beginning to take a more serious look at the iPhone.

There is only ONE real growth prospect here . . . and it doesn't include 7 more versions of the same Bold/Pearl we've seen for the past two years.

Unlike some I want everyone to be within 1% of each other. Competition breeds innovation. You might have heard that before.

WHAT!? First of all, youve laughed at Apple for selling less PCs by comparing it to MS licensed OS sales so that isnt true. On top of that, being within 1% of unit sales (which Im sure you are referencing) has no baring on increasing or decreasing innovation.

Secondly, competition can breed technical innovation and/or economical innovation. Those $400 notebooks have economical innovation by finding by getting 3rd-aprty software developers to pay the vendors to put heir crapware on these cheap machines. The cheaper the machine or company the more crapware youre going to get. They have also sparked technical innovation but finding new ways to cut corners in the machines themselves.

Its the high-end products that spark the innovations you are thinking of. The companies that have the finances, ability and clienteles that make future-forward technological advances well worth it. We see advances in art in come from great artists, not the guy drawing caricatures of your family at the country fair. We see advancements in the automobile industry come from the high-end and eventually trickle down to the low-end after many generations. This is how society works.

Finally, its impossible for Apple to be with 1% of any PC vendor while also being within 1% of all OS vendors due to their business model. They only sell the OS with their HW so to give Windows 50% and MAc OS X 50% means that Apple also has 50% of the PC industry, which would be about 80% of the profits for the entire world. Even to have Apple match HP at 25% would give Apple have the worlds profits from PCs. They could buy MS with their spare cahnge at that point.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Finally, its impossible for Apple to be with 1% of any PC vendor while also being within 1% of all OS vendors due to their business model.

But No! No! There can't be any competition unless everyone is within 1% market share of each other! Can't you see that!? Didn't you learn basic economics!? You make no sense whatsoever! Even if you did, you can't!!!

Have you ever spoken to a blackberry user about their phone? There's no convincing them of anything better. That's not going away anytime soon.

I said it before and I'll say it again: Whatever comes along and "trumps" the iphone won't look anything like an iphone.

Yeah, but that's the problem, isn't it? Outside of "What Apple did plus 'features' plus lower cost'", where is the innovation in the tech industry that will bring us this new device that rethinks the fundamentals?

It's been more than two years since the iPhone debuted, and every credible competitor to date has simply been variations on that theme, along with trumpeted bullet points like higher mega-pixel cameras with flash or removable batteries or higher res screens, etc.

Because that's how the tech industry works, largely. They don't do fundamental innovation, they do gimmicks and specs as added value, in an effort to eke out some mind share.

Fundamental innovation means vision, big picture thinking, and a long range plan that doesn't include letting your marketing and engineering departments call the shots. It means asking "what are people wanting to do, and what is the best, most satisfying way for them to do that?" before you ask "can we make the animation between screens look cooler for the ads?" or "can we make some spec have a higher number to beat the competition with?"

I honestly don't see a lot of big picture thinking in the tech industry at large, and it sucks because that would mean more better products and fewer absolutely inexcusable, borderline unusable pieces of crap, flash in the pan dead ends, and "awesome" products that nobody in their right mind would bother to figure out how to use.

Apple is the R&D outfit for the industry by default, not because they're good or noble or likable, but because they have a singular maniac at the helm that asks the right questions, and demands the right answers. Sony used to have some of that, but they got too unfocused and apparently lost the ability to say no to the engineers. Red, the digital camera people, have it in spades, but in an extremely narrow niche market. Interestingly, they also have a singular maniac at the helm.

For better or worse, that makes it unlikely that anyone else with the deep pockets to fund the kind of major rollout necessary to compete with the iPhone is going to do anything more than doodle in Apple's margins. Not to say that they won't have a lot of success with that, there's a lot of reasons for preferring a pretty good copy over the original if the copiers are clever and keep an eye on the bottom line. But they're not going to be a startling rethink of the possibilities, because the people who should be making such products simply aren't designed to take that kind of risk.

They spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the grand duke, and told stories of his kindness and irascibility.

I swear i always seem to see the same arguments, Apple is crushing RIM and Nintendo, yet no one can seem to be logical in any discussion regarding this.

RIM has just unveiled Flash and OpenGL (please note, as a Blackberry Bold user im pretty fucking irate at RIM right now, only the Storm 2 and Curve 8530 (both CDMA VZW devices) are "capable" of running OpenGL atm) and i have to say after looking at the videos, the gap between the iphone is coming to a close and fast. New ways to customize the devices and theme builders as well as better dev tools (finally...) mean Blackberry apps wont look so archaic anymore. With the new Webkit browser comes better rendering of HTML emails as well, so RIM has shut down many selling points of the iphone now. BES blows everything out the water, so unless your a small company or security and convenience dont matter to you then the iphone works for you in enterprise (assuming every employee you have has AT&T)!

The only thing the iphone will have going for it is, 100k apps (of which 95%+ suck) and iTunes (which BB are capable of syncing with already).

Right now the iPhones features over competitors are dying and fast and they are still living off the hype (like the Wii was), unless the 4G pulls out some serious new features i can see people passing on the next iteration just like quite a few people i know have done for the 3GS

Apple officially sold 6.9mil iPhones in Q3 2008, a figure backed up by Canalys. Gartner's figure of 4.7 mil is total nonsense and invalidates their entire report.

Apple's growth was 6-7% rather than nearly 50%. Still a very good figure considering the market conditions and the evolutionary upgrade from the 3G to the 3GS.

Gartner took out the 2 million iphone channel inventory --- so 4.7 million iphone sell through in Q3 2008. And you can also notice that Apple announced that they ship 7.367 iphones a few weeks ago, but their channel inventory went up by 250K, that's why Gartner uses 7.04 million iphones sold through number in this quarter.

I swear i always seem to see the same arguments, Apple is crushing RIM and Nintendo, yet no one can seem to be logical in any discussion regarding this.

RIM has just unveiled Flash and OpenGL (please note, as a Blackberry Bold user im pretty fucking irate at RIM right now, only the Storm 2 and Curve 8530 (both CDMA VZW devices) are "capable" of running OpenGL atm) and i have to say after looking at the videos, the gap between the iphone is coming to a close and fast. New ways to customize the devices and theme builders as well as better dev tools (finally...) mean Blackberry apps wont look so archaic anymore. With the new Webkit browser comes better rendering of HTML emails as well, so RIM has shut down many selling points of the iphone now. BES blows everything out the water, so unless your a small company or security and convenience dont matter to you then the iphone works for you in enterprise (assuming every employee you have has AT&T)!

The only thing the iphone will have going for it is, 100k apps (of which 95%+ suck) and iTunes (which BB are capable of syncing with already).

Right now the iPhones features over competitors are dying and fast and they are still living off the hype (like the Wii was), unless the 4G pulls out some serious new features i can see people passing on the next iteration just like quite a few people i know have done for the 3GS

Right now the iPhones features over competitors are dying and fast and they are still living off the hype (like the Wii was), unless the 4G pulls out some serious new features i can see people passing on the next iteration just like quite a few people i know have done for the 3GS

Youd think after this much time with the iPhone people would look at UI, ease of use and ecosystem instead of thinking that features on a spec sheet are what sells phones.

Yes, you'd think. And, you'd think, so would their acolytes. Yet they love to hang around in Apple forums like AI instead, and attempt to keep bashing the company by rehashing the same nonsense ad nauseum. They keep saying the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different outcome.

Yes, you'd think. And, you'd think, so would their acolytes. Yet they love to hang around in Apple forums like AI instead, and attempt to keep bashing the company by rehashing the same nonsense ad nauseum. They keep saying the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different outcome.

Pathetic, isn't it?

Might have something to do with some natural (or socially ingained) hesitation to express adulation over a single company, over an extended period of time. It's somehow wrong to enjoy tech from the same company at the expense of enjoying it from other companies.

Now if only I actually liked the crap that every other tech company produces . . .

Yes, you'd think. And, you'd think, so would their acolytes. Yet they love to hang around in Apple forums like AI instead, and attempt to keep bashing the company by rehashing the same nonsense ad nauseum. They keep saying the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different outcome.

Pathetic, isn't it?

And their excuse is that they want to educate Mac users!!

The problem with most of them is lack of comprehension, writing skills, and communication skills. I doubts most of them even finished high school.